Tuesday, 7 July 2015

Letters of 1916 project needs your help for next phase

Regular readers of Irish Genealogy News will know that I'm a great supporter of the Letters of 1916 project, Ireland's first public humanities initiative that's crowdsourced a new digital collection of letters, postcards and photos from around the time of the Easter Rising nearly 100 years ago.

Since it launched in 2013, the team has gathered more than 2,000 lettersand uploaded nearly all of them to its public database at http://dh.tcd.ie/letters1916/. Many have also been transcribed (if you can help with a bit of transcription work, take a look at the Contribute section of the site).

The project is now approaching its next phase: the launch of the Letters of 1916 Digitial Edition website. This is scheduled for 3 November.

Before then, the project team needs to evaluate the functionality and usability of the new website.

Can you help? In return for an hour of your time one morning between 8 and 17 July, you will receive a sneak preview of the next stage of the project and the opportunity to provide valuable feedback to the final Letters of 1916 Digital Edition. You will be asked to complete some tasks on the new website and let the project team know what you think of it.

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Welcome to Irish Genealogy News

Irish genealogy research is famous for being difficult, if not impossible. This reputation isn't entirely deserved, although there can be some fundamental difficulties in discovering your Irish ancestry, particularly if you don't know where your ancestors lived. That's why I launched my website, Irish Genealogy Toolkit. It's a free online guide to Irish family history research, and it's designed to helpyou to find your heritage.

This blog runs in parallel with the Toolkit and is not sponsored, aligned or connected with any commercial organisations. As its name suggests, it carries the latest Irish genealogy news and it's read by professional and amateur genealogists who recognise its independence and wide coverage of news.

Be sure to bookmark my blog's home page, and check in regularly to keep up to date with what's happening in the world of Irish family history.